Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #3: Books 9-12 (A Dead Cold Box Set), Blake Banner [reading in the dark TXT] 📗

officers generally, really. I trust all of you, and you two more than most.” He looked up. “As far as I am concerned, you have proved yourselves beyond question, and often gone beyond the call of duty.”

Dehan was frowning, like she was expecting a trap.

I said, “Thank you, sir.”

He sat back. “I am always here for my officers, but personally, I don’t care what goes on in your private lives…” He held up one finger. “With one, major caveat: As long as you don’t bring it to work with you. As long as it does not interfere with your work, or interfere with the quality of your investigation.” He frowned down at his hands and nodded repeatedly, as though they were secretly saying something interesting to him. “I think I have made myself clear and I need say no more.”

Dehan swallowed and I took a deep breath. “Perfectly clear, sir.”

We stood and as Dehan stepped out of the office ahead of me, the inspector called me back.

“Oh, John…”

I stopped and turned. “Yes, sir?”

“We have interrogation rooms, you know.” He smiled. “You might try conducting some of your interviews there, occasionally. And, John, I don’t quite know how to say this. Let me be blunt. It has come as no surprise to anybody. We’ve all known for a long time. And we are all very happy for you. There will be some teasing, of course, so try to make sure Carmen weathers it with good humor.”

I gave him my best lopsided smile and nodded. “Thank you, sir.”

Dehan was waiting for me on the stairs.

“What was that?”

“What was what?”

“Why’d he call you back?”

I turned to face her. I stepped in close, held her shoulders and smiled at her. “He told me it has come as no surprise to anybody. They all knew long before we did. Everybody is very happy for us and they wish us well. There will be some good-natured razzing, but we should take it in good part. Now, let’s get back to work. We have a murder to solve.”

She nodded and we went down to the detectives room. Mo was at his desk leering at us as we approached. Dehan dropped into her chair and he called over, “Hey, where you been all weekend…?”

He was about to go on, but I replied in a loud voice that just about everybody could hear, “I responded to an emergency call.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Yeah? Who from…?”

Again I cut him short. “Your wife.” I dropped into my chair and smiled at him. A few other detectives were looking over and grinning. “She said she hadn’t got laid in ten years and she was about to have an aneurism. Luckily I got to her in time. It took me all weekend to fix the problem, though.”

His face turned crimson.

“Any more questions, Mo? No?” I pointed at the work on his desk. “How about trying to make an arrest this semester?”

There was some suppressed chuckling around the room. I turned back to my own desk and picked up the phone. Dehan was typing furiously at her laptop, but I could see her shoulder shaking silently.

The phone rang a couple of times and a pretty voice answered.

“Hello?”

“Good morning, is this Jane Harrison?”

“Speaking.”

“This is Detective John Stone of the NYPD. We run a cold case unit and we are looking into the homicide of Danny Brown…”

“Danny? My goodness… That was twenty years ago, at least!”

“It was almost exactly twenty years ago. I was wondering if you could spare us some time to answer a few questions.”

“Of course, but I’m not sure I can tell you anything useful. I imagine you’re at the 43rd?”

I told her we were and she said, “OK, you’re in luck. I have the day off. I work in TV production at NBC and my timetable is pretty erratic. I can be there in less than half an hour.”

I thanked her and hung up.

Dehan spoke without looking at me. “I’ve been trying to find the footage of the lights. No luck so far. Most of the local papers carried articles on it, but the most comprehensive one was in the Fortean Times.” She shook her head. “I can’t see that any of them has anything more than we know already.”

I flopped back and stared at her. “And we know practically nothing.”

She nodded, met my eye, crossed her arms, and leaned back, mirroring my movement, and began to speak. “They all drove up to the mountain. They saw lights in the sky on his scanner. Jasmine went into a trance and said she and Danny should go to the glade.” She wagged a finger at me. “That’s a turning point. Donald says no. They return to Donald’s house. We don’t know when exactly, but presumably some time in the morning. But by six in the evening, everybody’s had enough and instead of the party they had planned, they all go home—and this is the second turning point. Because now Danny disappears. How far is it from Don’s house to Danny’s? Less than a mile. He could walk it in a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes max. But somewhere between Pugsley Avenue and Lacombe, Danny vanishes off the face of the Earth and is gone for somewhere between twenty-four and thirty-six hours.”

I studied her in silence for a while, then added, “And during that time he is incinerated and dismembered. We don’t know how.”

“Incinerated, dismembered, and placed carefully, leaving no tracks.”

“For no reason.”

“What?”

I shook my head, then shrugged and spread my hands. “What’s the motive? Nobody made an insurance killing on him, nobody inherited anything of value, nobody got rich from his death. He was single, everybody liked him… What was the motive?”

Dehan sighed and rubbed her face. “It’s not hard,” she